Apple has been ordered to pay $208.5 million in damages to Mirror Worlds, LLC …

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Apple has been ordered to pay more than $200 million to Mirror Worlds, LLC after having lost a patent infringement case brought by the company. Apple was found to be in violation of Mirror Worlds' "document streaming" patents, which Apple allegedly used in its implementation of Cover Flow and Time Machine.

The document streams outlined in the patents would contain many different types of documents with a similar theme, and would be organized in chronological order and displayed in a pile. Sound a lot like Cover Flow and Time Machine? That's because it is. Anyone who's familiar with the visual document layout of those two technologies knows that they use the same concept: visually displaying documents in a pile that you can scroll through (as pictured above).

The case went all the way to trial, and a federal jury in eastern Texas agreed with Mirror Worlds on three of the four patents (the fourth was tossed earlier this year). According to Bloomberg, Mirror Worlds' founder David Gelernter said he was "tremendously grateful" to his lawyers for their performance, but neither he nor his lawyers commented further on the verdict.

$208.5 million is a drop in the bucket for a company with Apple's bankroll, but it has to be an irritation for a company that has been implementing similar document display concepts in Hypercard for far longer than the patents ever existed.

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

More seriously, it's a shame that any company would lose a patent battle when they didn't just implement the software independently, but they implemented it first.

EDIT: Ok, on actually reading the patents, I have to say I'm really saddened. This is the most blatant patent trolling I've seen in a long time. This guy actually took out a pre-emptive patent on Microsoft and Apple's yet-undesigned operating systems. The companies are mentioned in conjunction with every major patent claim. It's like he came right out and said that he can't implement it himself, but they will, and he wants money when they do. I'd have to look at the finer details of the court ruling, but I can't imagine there's any standard by which Apple would have lost that wouldn't also have Win7 held as infringing the patent as well.

So how detailed are these patent descriptions? I mean, if I had an array of album images that I iterated through and displayed, am I infringing? If so, that sounds like an awfully vague/basic patent. And there has to be some sort of prior art for that.

So how detailed are these patent descriptions? I mean, if I had an array of album images that I iterated through and displayed, am I infringing? If so, that sounds like an awfully vague/basic patent. And there has to be some sort of prior art for that.

Almost all software patents can be broken down into a series of very simple steps that any competent programmer can put together pseudocode for in a few hours. Software patents are an unbelievable joke.

I say short of the nuclear option on that patent-trolling friendly county in east Texas, maybe Congress needs to address the issue of patent trolling head-on. And this nonsense of forcing all these companies to fight it in a county notorious for being so unjustly one-sided.

Patent trolls suck, but it does make me laugh. Apple (and others) have a history of patenting prior art (somehow) then suing anyone that uses it. Apple deserves to be on the receiving side for once. That being said, I would really love to see a really major patent system overhaul.

Wait a sec - wasn't the "original" coverflow implementation coded by an Arsian? I remember way back, when people were offering advice on the forums on how to sell the coverflow code to apple - and I think the guy got money in the end, but opted not to work for apple.

EDIT: Ok, on actually reading the patents, I have to say I'm really saddened. This is the most blatant patent trolling I've seen in a long time. This guy actually took out a pre-emptive patent on Microsoft and Apple's yet-undesigned operating systems. The companies are mentioned in conjunction with every major patent claim. It's like he came right out and said that he can't implement it himself, but they will, and he wants money when they do. I'd have to look at the finer details of the court ruling, but I can't imagine there's any standard by which Apple would have lost that wouldn't also have Win7 held as infringing the patent as well.

What would be the last most blatant one, Eolas? They got Microsoft for having plugin capability in their browser for even more money, and yet Apple, Mozilla, and now Google weren't "got" as it were. So just having one company be a target is nothing new. I do seem to recall Eolas threatening to go after the others but it hasn't happened yet as far as I know. Perhaps the same will be true in this case. Both are horrible examples of legalized highway robbery.

EDIT: Ok, on actually reading the patents, I have to say I'm really saddened. This is the most blatant patent trolling I've seen in a long time. This guy actually took out a pre-emptive patent on Microsoft and Apple's yet-undesigned operating systems. The companies are mentioned in conjunction with every major patent claim. It's like he came right out and said that he can't implement it himself, but they will, and he wants money when they do. I'd have to look at the finer details of the court ruling, but I can't imagine there's any standard by which Apple would have lost that wouldn't also have Win7 held as infringing the patent as well.

It will be appealed and likely overturned.

Apple clearly has prior art and if this was a jury case, large companies have a distinct disadvantage in east Texas ( where the population is essentially biased against anyone successful; especially a company with a snooty, urban image like Apple.) Bring this case out of the boonies and judge it on the facts and the outcome will be different.

I really hate cover flow. I guess it harks back to a time when albums had big 12" slipcases, but even with the CDs I own I usually carried the discs in a binder and left the cases at home. I have no good memory of what most album covers look like and find a list a much easier way to select music. Plus, it tends to be glitchy.

Not really anything new to say about the situation at this point however, software patents are abominations, and these things will happen endlessly, causing great damage to society, until we somehow finally get them abolished as they should be.

morphoyle wrote:

Patent trolls suck, but it does make me laugh. Apple (and others) have a history of patenting prior art (somehow) then suing anyone that uses it. Apple deserves to be on the receiving side for once.

Disagree, all the way around. Software patents are fundamentally wrong, but neither Apple nor other manufacturers are the worthless leeches that are patent trolls. It is simply not realistic to not expect companies to work within the law in general. As far as "being on the receiving side" it's hardly "for once," all companies that actually make stuff get hit by these all the time, Apple included. And no, they don't deserve it, no one does. It's a horrible system, and quite frankly I believe schadenfreude gets old at some point. I'm sick of software patents in particular, which have caused a me personal damage as well, and I don't want them abused against companies small or large, I want them gone.

With elections coming up now might be a good time for everyone who hasn't already to again write their representatives about this, by the way. I write every year, and you should absolutely get a response, because despite the size of the population, a shockingly low number actually bother to ever make an attempt at communicating their concerns (I suppose a depressing number don't even vote for that matter). And nothing like an upcoming election to focus minds on voters. So please make the effort? A single letter can literally be considered to be representative of thousands of people since so few write.

I say short of the nuclear option on that patent-trolling friendly county in east Texas, maybe Congress needs to address the issue of patent trolling head-on. And this nonsense of forcing all these companies to fight it in a county notorious for being so unjustly one-sided.

One sided? How? There were lawyers on both sides and they made out handsomely. The Congress Critters you speak of are almost to a man lawyers as well. Why would they want to disenfranchise their career partners?

This is head scratcher, but its a game that Apple, MS and everyone else play routinely. All the lawsuits in the Android space are a good example. Most of the industry admits that MS serving Motorola doesn't mean patents have been infringed, it just means 'this can get really expensive and lengthy, so wouldn't you rather just sign on'. The fact that shaking down one company means others are more eager to sign on doesn't speak at all to the validity of the claims but it often gets em to line up.

A slight aside: I saw this weekend somewhere that there may soon be patents in the fashion industry. If an industry ever needed them, its this one maybe, but knockoffs and same but somehow different often end up being improvements.

Still I feel like everyone even trolls believe in patents except opensource devs. I know its costly, but we can crowdsource the fees or at least try.

I say short of the nuclear option on that patent-trolling friendly county in east Texas, maybe Congress needs to address the issue of patent trolling head-on.

Sure they need to, but there's zero chance of that happening. There's so much lobbying juice there it's not even funny, and McCain-Feingold was gutted by the Supreme Court, making it worse. Congress is going to be utterly dysfunctional after the mid-terms anyway, even more than usual. And the government isn't going to want to weaken their position re. the horrible exploitative IP laws they're pushing in their "free trade" agreements with poor countries. There's nothing to do but enjoy some grim laughter when the biter is occasionally bitten.

Wait wait wait. So somebody out there successfully patented and defended a patent that pertains to ARRANGING THINGS IN A FUCKING PILE!?

There must be more to the patent than that right? There must be some kind of code or implementation that it covered right? Tell me the full extent of the patent consists of more than just "arranging stuff in a pile." This is exactly how jukeboxes work. You can't say "X on a computer screen" and have that be a patent.

Wait wait wait. So somebody out there successfully patented and defended a patent that pertains to ARRANGING THINGS IN A FUCKING PILE!?

There must be more to the patent than that right? There must be some kind of code or implementation that it covered right? Tell me the full extent of the patent consists of more than just "arranging stuff in a pile." This is exactly how jukeboxes work. You can't say "X on a computer screen" and have that be a patent.

Sadly, "X on a computer screen" is pretty much par for the course when it comes to how dumb software patents are. A lot manage to be even dumber and less meaningful than that. Apple itself litigates patents it holds that are equally idiotic. Only the lawyers win.

Wait wait wait. So somebody out there successfully patented and defended a patent that pertains to ARRANGING THINGS IN A FUCKING PILE!?

There must be more to the patent than that right? There must be some kind of code or implementation that it covered right? Tell me the full extent of the patent consists of more than just "arranging stuff in a pile." This is exactly how jukeboxes work. You can't say "X on a computer screen" and have that be a patent.

Yes, this is how software patents work. Source code disclosure is not required. This is why they are so stupid compared to most other patents. You get to patent the concept instead of implementation, and everybody else who accomplishes the same thing on their own (which as demonstrated can be VERY easy to do) is vulnerable to infringement claims.

David Gelernter isn't a common patent troll. He's a prof at Yale and a seminal figure in computer science, particularly HCI (human-computer interaction). He also influenced the foundations of parallel programming and his ideas strongly influenced Java (which may or may not win kudos, depending on your thoughts there). He was a prominent enough icon of technology that he was attacked by Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) in the early 90s.

His models for information presentation in stacks / piles date to the late 80s - and I remember playing with Mirror Worlds personal information organizing software in the 90s...Mirror Worlds had a 10 year run trying to sell its own software - they did plenty of implementation. I wouldn't be surprised that he is the one with the earliest prior art, rather than Apple via Hypercard.

All this vitriol against software patents.. Are they not designed to ensure that the creator of a new technology receives compensation for his work? If we get rid of them, what incentive will there be for people to invent new software technology?

Actually, being a software developer I've run into patent issues before. I'd like to see them eliminated -- along with the other big problem plaguing us these days -- copyright. Neither are necessary.

I'm not sure about the patent troll accusation. These patents were initially filed between 1999 and 2001. Apple didn't put buy Cover Flow until 2006 according to Wikipedia. (if anyone knows what the prior art was before 1999, then do tell/add link) Apple recently received a design patent on it (applied for in 2007, debatable whether that should have been possible given their own published prior art)

And while they mention "windows operating system" and "an Apple operating system" these are as part of something called dependent claims which are used to make claims more specific. The meat of the patent is in the "independent claims" which have no mention of the Microsoft or Apple.

The fact that this went to a jury trial and Mirror World won, means that either Apples lawyers did a horrible job of defending their case, or Mirror World actually had a stronger case than anyone here is giving them credit for.

I believe our trial by jury system has lost its usefulness due to the complexity of current law. In this case, why should a single jury chosen from a small part of a certain state be able to decide the legality of an action affecting the rest of the country? This should only be allowed (assuming you support trial by jury) if the jury is representative of the rest of the country. This is clearly untrue as seen by the fact that patent cases keep on being litigated in this court (i.e. the lawyers realize they're more likely to win there).

I mean I personally think we shouldn't have trial by jury anymore, but in this case I don't understand how it could be defended even by its advocates. Of course you could argue that the patent system should be reformed (I think it should regardless of a change of jury system) and that the jury system is fine as it is. I would consider that reform an improvement, but I still think the system should be removed for many complex legal challenges as it is.